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The Stilltime story

The Stilltime Collection is a unique archive of more than a million British Photographs from the 20th century that has been preserved and made available as a historic record. Our image search facility gives a unique opportunity to see how people lived across the world and how Britain shaped the last century.

The photographic collection of Stilltime has been amassed over the last 110 years. It comprises mostly of photograph negatives although it does include a substantial quantity of photo prints.

The photo negatives are evenly split between more modern film formats and glass plates which record an unrivalled wealth of detail. Most of the photographic images were taken by professional photographers for publication in journals, some of which have long since ceased to exist.

The subject matter is a varied as the journals but they were not averse to drifting off-subject. As with all such photo collections, only a very small percentage of the whole will have ever been published, and then only once and many years ago. Effectively, many of these photographs are being seen for the first time and are not available elsewhere.

It is difficult to estimate the number of pictures in the collection, but it can be said with confidence that it is well in excess of one million. Thus far some 50,000 photographs have been archived, a proportion of which are available here for sale.